Various signal processing techniques have been developed for estimating the location of a sound source by using multiple microphones. Such techniques typically assume that the microphones are located in free space with a relatively simple geometric arrangement, such as a linear array or a circular array, which makes it relatively easy to analyze detected sound waves. However, in some situations, microphones may not be arranged in a linear or circular array. For example, microphones may be randomly positioned at various locations across a device of an arbitrary shape in a given environment instead of being positioned in a linear or circular array. Sound waves may be diffracted and scattered across the device before they are detected by the microphones. Scattering effects, reverberations, and other linear and nonlinear effects across an arbitrarily shaped device may complicate the analysis involved in estimating the location of a sound source.
In multi-microphone devices the geometry/shape of the device is important. If the shape of the device changes, for example to move the placement of the microphones, the operation of the device, particularly the accuracy, of the device may be greatly affected. To address changes in the device shape, the device must be recorded in multiple size and shape rooms using the new design. As such, all previous recordings done for the device using the previous shape may be thrown away, which may result in a waste of resources.